the olive are white, placed on the stalk at the roots of the leaves, and are arranged in bunches. They are very fragrant, and appear in June. The fruit, which is a roundish oval, ripens in September and October; green at first, it passes into a dirty white, and after taking on other shades, it becomes a purple black. The leaves are lance-shaped, evergreen, and generally arranged two by two. The embryo of the olive has, like all the members of this group of trees, a double seed-lobe (dicotyledonous).

The olive-tree is said to live to a great age. Hundreds of years are claimed for it. Those still growing in Gethsemane are held to have been in the garden in the days of our Lord's earthly sojourn. Pliny tells

us that the Athenians, in his day, were in the habit of showing to strangers an olive-tree, which, they alleged, had been planted at the founding of Athens, and which at that time, according to their reckoning, must have been upwards of fifteen hundred years old. The French botanist, M. De Candolle, estimates the natural age of the olive to be above seven hundred years. In his calculations, this is a comparatively brief period of arboreal life. He assigns eight hundred years to the Cedar (Cedrus Lebani); one thousand five hundred to the Oak (Quercus robur); four thousand to the Boabab (Adansonia digitata) of Western Africa; and six thousand years are assigned to the Dragon tree (Dracaena Draco)! For the Mammoth Pine (Wellingtonia gigantea), the bark of one of which is preserved in the Crystal Palace, a claim is

made which would throw back the embryo condition of even existing trees to a co-Adamic period! But there are certain drawbacks to such computations, which make the data for the longevity of exogenous plants not so trustworthy as at first sight they may appear. In some trees of tropical climes, for example, it is known that more than one outside concentric layer may be deposited in one season, while in others the traces of the regular processes of growth are not unfrequently obliterated by age, by colouring matters, and by the union of series of rings. This will again be referred to under Isaiah lxv. 22.

Though the olive is characterized by a specific name (0. Europaea), which might seem to point to Europe as its native region, it is not an indigenous European plant. It was introduced to Europe from Asia Minor at a very early period. The legend of its introduction into Greece is suggestive of the circumstances now under notice. A dove, it is said, flew from Phoenicia, with an olive branch in its mouth, into the temple of Jupiter at Epirus, and the priests planted and watched over the twig until it became a full-grown tree. Gibbon, in the second chapter of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," when referring to Pliny's elaborate account of the olive, points more truly to the cause of its introduction to Europe. Its acceptance by the Easterns as a symbol of peace everywhere met adventurers from the West, and they returned bringing the symbols home with them. "The olive," he says, "followed the progress of peace, of which it was considered a symbol. Two centuries after the foundation of Rome, both Italy and Africa were strangers to that useful plant. It was naturalized in those countries, and at length carried into the heart of Spain and Gaul. The timid error of the ancients, that it required a certain degree of heat, and could only flourish in the neighbourhood of the sea, were insensibly exploded by industry and experience." It is, however, true that this plant requires warmth, as its position in France, Spain, Italy, as well as Syria, testifies. Baron Humboldt states that it flourishes between the parallels 36° and 44°; wherever the mean annual temperature is from 62.6° to 58.1°, where the mean temperature of the coldest month is not below from 41° to 42'8°, and that of the whole summer from 71.6° to 734°. These facts should remove all doubt in regard to the olive leaf pluckt off by the dove. It appears to have been sent forth in the morning, and to have returned in the evening. In its day's flight it could reach many places in which the olive grew, even though it should be held that those parts of the range of Ararat, in the neigh

bourhood of which the ark rested, could not be suitable for the growth of the olive-tree.

We find, connected with the history of this plant, one of those curious and interesting links in language by which most remote times are kept together, and families of mankind, which may now seem farthest separated in language, situation, and habits, brought into close association. Thus zayith, the Hebrew for olive, becomes zaitoon among the Arabians. It passes with Arabs into Spain, and is met with as azeituna, the Spanish equivalent for an olive; azeite, oil in general; azeituno, the olive-tree, a word which occurs in the Spanish common saying, corresponding with our "call it what you will". "You may name it olive or olive-tree, it is all to one purpose" (olivo y azeituno todo es uno). The Spanish conquerors took both the plants and the names with them to South America, and enriched their language by yet other derivatives from the original root. Thus the word which was used originally in the districts bordering on the primitive seat of mankind is, under other forms, current at this day in some of the least known tracts of the New World. To trace its history would be to follow the fortunes of several powerful tribes, which have influenced, either in remote or in comparatively modern times, the destinies of many great nations.

The mode in which the sacred historian narrates the subsidence of the waters, deserves to be noticed. They were "abated from off the earth" (ver. 11); that is, they had begun to retire and to leave even the more elevated plains bare. They were "dried up from off the face of the ground;" "the face of the ground was dry" (ver. 13)—the process of drying was rapidly proceeding, and wider areas were seen fully exposed. "In the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried” (ver. 14). It was now with that wide region, out on which righteous Noah gazed from the ark window, as it had been before that awful catastrophe swept over it, carrying with it universal desolation, ruin, and death. The retiring waters would float into surrounding seas the evidences of the terrible havoc; and the earth would be fitted again for the new generation. "The globe was ready to receive again its master, and to nourish him, and the numberless tribes of the animal creation. On the command of God, Noah and his family left the ark, together with all the living beings which had been preserved by him to secure new tribes of occupants of the air, the fields, and the forests. All the species of animals were restored to the earth; 'every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl,' left the ark, that none of the creatures which were once formed

by the Divine will might be wanting; the deluge was not to interrupt the main course of universal history; all the generations, from the beginning to the latest ages, were to be connected by one unbroken chain; the tree of time was temporarily stripped of its branches and leaves, but its stem was neither felled nor injured; it was full of its native strength, and destined soon to bloom again in all its former richness and beauty. But yet, a new order of things was to begin; therefore, God again blessed the animals with the promise of fruitfulness, desiring them to spread on the earth, which he delights to see replete with life, and to echo with the sound of joy." The judgment brought on the world at the time when God sent the flood, is referred to in other parts of Scripture for high moral ends in God's government of the world, and especially in his dealings with his covenant people-the church. Thus, when he opens up fully the grandeur of his cause, when the church shall have ceased to rest in the enjoyment of limited national advantages and prerogatives, and shall be found bidding for the affections of "all men everywhere," he couches the assurance that the old system of a church confined to a single nation, as in the case of the Hebrews, will for ever cease to be possible when once the Redeemer shall come to be acknowledged as "the God of the whole earth,” under this declaration-" For this is as the waters of Noah unto me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have, sworn that I should not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee" (Isa. liv. 9, 10). In Ezekiel (xiv. 14–20) Noah's influence for good on the fortunes of his household at the time of the flood, are set in contrast with what his influence would have been, had he lived among the wickedness of the days referred to by the prophet. In the former case, the Lord regarded others favourably for his sake; in the latter case, we are told that had Noah been alive, he would only have "delivered his own soul by his righteousness." In this way, the prophet conveys to the people the views of the Lord touching the grievous departure of the nation from him. When Jesus, towards the close of his ministry on earth, seated himself on the Mount of Olives in full view of the Holy City, the disciples asked him for signs of his second "coming, and of the end of the world," and the Saviour used the history of the deluge, among other illustrations:-"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were,

so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" (Matt. xxiv. 36-39). As there was general unbelief of the threatening of the flood, so shall it be in the last days: "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" And as all men pursued their usual habits, undistracted by everything like dread of a coming doom, so shall it be with the world when the cry shall be heard, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh," and the Son of God shall again be revealed to it in the brightness of his personal presence. Thus their conduct and attitude were in strong contrast with those of Noah:-"By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith" (Heb. xi. 7).

Some of the uses which the apostle Peter made of this historical fact have been referred to above. One, however, has not been noticed. He points out the great object of the sufferings of Christ, refers to his death and resurrection, and contrasts the success of the ministration of the Spirit among the captives to whom liberty was preached and among the bound who were told of the opening of their prison doors, with the want of success of Noah, as the preacher of righteousness, and the man of faith:-"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water" (1 Peter, iii. 18-20). After this he adds-"The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels, and authorities, and powers, being made subject unto him" (ver. 21, 22). That baptism of the earth was not only the introduction of a new era to it, but there was implied in it a yet deeper spiritual significance. The very element which, because the word of God associated with it was slighted, overwhelmed the doomed race, was the instrument in the hand of sovereign grace for the salvation of the eight persons in the ark